More than 500 years since he was killed in battle, archaeologists believe they
have finally found the skeleton of King Richard III, buried deep beneath a
council car park.

Over 500 years since he was killed in battle, archaeologists believe they have finally found the skeleton of King Richard III, buried deep beneath a council car park.

Experts said a fully intact skeleton matched much about what they knew about the medieval king, and are hoping that DNA tests will put their beliefs beyond doubt.

The remains were found three weeks into an archaeological dig by a team from Leicester University, which recently pinpointed the site of the ancient Grey Friars church, where Richard was believed to be buried after being killed in the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485, and which was razed to the ground in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries ordered by Henry VIII.

To their astonishment, an excavation unearthed a result which experts said were “beyond our wildest dreams”.

A memorial stone to him rests in Leicester Cathedral, but nobody knows precisely where he was buried

Five key aspects underlined their belief that appears to have ended a decade-long search for his remains.

The skeleton was an adult male, who appeared fit and strong. He had suffered significant trauma to the head where a blade had cut away part of the back of his skull; an injury consistent with battle.

A barbed arrow head was found lodged between vertebrae in his upper back, and spinal abnormalities pointed to the fact that he had severe scoliosis, a form of spinal curvature. This would have made his right shoulder appear visibly higher than his left, which is consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard’s appearance.

Richard's two year reign was the subject of one of William Shakespeare's most famous plays, which portrayed him as an evil, ugly hunchback, and which helped cement the public perception of him.

The remains were found in the Choir area of the church, again consistent with historical record of where he was buried.

A map of the cloister where the body was found

Philippa Langley, of the Richard III Society, who has driven the search to find his body since the year 2000, said: “This goes to show that if you have a dream, you should follow that dream.

“This will allow us to really challenge what we know about Richard and rewrite the history of the last two years of his life. We can find out how he got to the church, how he was buried, how he died; all the things that have been the subject of assumptions and misconceptions.”

Archaeolgists use ground penetration radar (GPR) at G

Little has ever been known about Richard III’s death, other than he died on the battlefield and was supposedly taken on horseback by his vanquisher, Henry Tudor, who later became King Henry VII. He remains the last King of England to die in battle.

He was the last of the Plantagenet dynasty and his death was decisive in the War of the Roses. Historians believe it also marked the end of the Middle Ages.

Richard Taylor, from Leicester University, whose team of experts led the dig, said: “We are not saying today that we have found Richard III. What we are saying is that the search for Richard III has entered a new phase.

"Our focus is shifting from the archaeological excavation to laboratory analysis.” He added: “clearly we are all very excited. We said that finding Richard was a long shot.”

Sir Peter Soulsby, Leicester’s mayor, said: “They can’t say it by I can – this is as near a certainty as we can get that we’ve found him. Everything fits.”

The only known account of Richard’s death is in a poem which states he was “poleaxed to the head”.

Claire Graham uses ground penetration radar (GPR) at G

Miss Langley said: “This story has never reached a conclusion. The last two years of Richard’s life history were written by the Tudors and paint a picture of an evil hunchback with a withered arm.

“That is totally at odds with what we know about the last 30 years and it is quite normal for the vanquisher to paint a negative picture.

“Richard was responsible for a lot of the laws that today uphold personal freedom – the right to justice whether rich or poor, the presumption of innocence, the clear title of property – so everyone has an interest in being able to piece together his full story.”

DNA tests are expected to take 12 weeks, and Turi King, from the university’s department of genetics, said that if they were not able to extract DNA or if tests proved inconclusive, they were unlikely to be any other avenues to prove conclusively the skeleton was the King’s.

The site, underneath a social work car park in Leicester city centre, will undergo further examination but is unlikely to be preserved for the public to view. Once all the tests are done, the skeleton – if it is Richard III – will be buried in Leicester.